Hello I'm Chris Smith from the Naked Scientist team. This week I'm joined by

Simon Morton from Radio New Zealand's This Way Up program for the first of two

special editions. At the Auckland University of Technology we were joined by a panel of six New Zealand

based scientists to talk about their work. We'll be hearing how lasers are being used to sort

sperm for the dairy industry. There's research on how to test for life on Mars. We find out about

the viruses which attack bacteria and which could be used instead of antibiotics. There's a new

online system to treat depression and anxiety,

how genetic techniques are tracking the spread of Ebola and other viruses

and predicting their impact,

and why radio transmitters are being strapped to the backs of bees.

The Naked Scientists Podcast is powered by UKfast.co.uk. We start with Kaytha Simpson, who's the director of the Photon factory at the University of Auckland.

There they use high-tech lasers to solve a variety of problems including exploring ways of harnessing sunlight

to produce energy. One project uses them to etch thermally absorbent surfaces and another studies

how pigments fade on old works of art.

Laser technology is also helping the New Zealand dairy industry

to sort bovine sperm so they can determine the sex of carves.

But before we got into the details of that,

KAver gave us a colourful explanation and demonstration of just how lasers work.

So a laser is a very special light source. So if you look at the lights in the room, you'll see that they look white or maybe slightly blue

that's because they're putting out light of all different colors in all different

directions. Lasers essentially pick out one color and put it out in a very tightly focused, we call it a coherent beam.

So I have three different lasers here.

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